The aim of this paper is to reflect on how a Majorcan physician who wrote a short treatise on obstetrics, gynaecology and paediatrics in 1541 thought the issues concerning the reproductive health of women and children's health. Drawing from the current situation of midwife training and its historical evolution, we carried out a review of the literature relating to Carbo's manual, and a critical analysis of this document in which we contextualise and examine the proposals of the author with respect to the attitudes, duties and skills midwives should have. Midwives, at this time, enjoyed social prestige, but physicians, appropriating midwives' experience, set themselves up as actors of obstetric care by using their training of midwives as a means of self promotion. Carbó sees midwives as experts in their art, with a good physical aptitude, resourceful, discreet, upright and good Christians.
History of nursing; Obstetrical nursing; History of medicine of the 16th cent